Goddamn it, Leeroy!
Unlocking a door, opening it, and going inside had been the first straightforward thing the hunter had been able to look forward to this trial, but seemingly the Immortals -or perhaps in this case the Originals?-had other ideas. He had been too intent on watching the door and what it opened to reveal to notice that Zoro had wandered off; he should have remained more alert to his surroundings. It wasn’t until after a color-shifted version of Zoro appeared in the room beyond the door that the traveler realized that the mariner had disappeared after touching one of the glowing forms in the mist.
Nor did Oram have time to respond to *that* before the self-invited avriel chose that moment to barge past him and Xander into the chamber, flinging Zoro out -whereupon the door swung to. Trying it, Oram found that it would not open, nor did the key seem to work any more. And here with them stood Zoro, now even more colorful than Wether, and constantly shifting, to boot.
Oram didn’t always use the sorts of words his father had sometimes used, but he did so now. He started pounding on the door, yelling at Kalortah through it to try opening it from the inside.
After a few trills, he stopped, willed himself to calm down. He was being foolish. This was just the sort of impulsive reaction Oram would rely on to trap an animal. Stepping back from the door, Oram looked at the tree, then at Zoro, Xander and Bao. It was just the four of them once more, beneath the enormous tree with Kal trapped within. And encompassing them was a barrier of colorful fog, populated with fae-like forms.
The first thing he needed to do was let the folks back at Scalvoris know what had just happened, via his diri. That took perhaps a trill, at the end of which he had no better idea what to do next than at the beginning. Oram glared back resentfully at the door and scowled. Banging on it again might not help, though it probably wouldn’t hurt to try, and it would mean spending a few more trills doing something other than staring at the tree like a fool. After that second round of pounding and shouting, however, he sighed and turned back to his remaining companions. ”Two things,” he said after a few moments of exasperated silence: ”First, we need to figure out how to get in there with him, or failing that, to get him back out; second, we need to decide what to do out here if we can’t.”
Zoro was all the wrong colors, and constantly changing to new wrong colors, but seemed otherwise unharmed. They needed to think about Xander, of course. The man’s clothes were still damp, and it was still dangerously cold out here. That brought Oram back to his earlier idea of gathering some wood and building a fire to keep warm. ”I’ve got an idea on the second front. I can start a fire so that we don’t freeze out here before we’re able to try anything else. As to the first…” The traveler shrugged.
As he started to look around for branches and twigs to collect -there should be plenty of such things, shouldn’t there, around a tree this size?- Oram’s eyes lighted on the winged forms flitting about in the colorful fog. ”Zoro got transported by one of those things into the tree; maybe they’d do the same for us? Would you be willing to try again?” He looked questioningly at Zoro and shrugged once more. It didn’t sound like such a great idea, now that he had said it aloud. Instead of moving to act on that suggestion, the hunter began gathering wood.